Slim Your Files Down With MoreSpace Folder Compression

If you often find yourself running out of disk space, you may find yourself in somewhat of a pickle. While you could opt to upgrade your hard drive or SSD, that can be expensive, not to mention you actually have to wait for the drive to arrive. So, if you need to free up some disk space quickly, what can you do? Simple: you can grab a file compression app from the Mac App Store.

Since the Mac App Store is a big place, when searching for a file compression app, you may be overwelmed with choices. And as someone who has tried quite a few of these apps,I can assure you that some of them don’t work that well. Don’t let that scare you away from the whole compression category of apps though, as today we’re reviewing MoreSpace, a popular compression app which just recently hit the App Store for a mere $1.99. So, with such an attractive price-tag, does MoreSpace work? You’re about to find out!

How Does MoreSpace Work?

Good question. MoreSpace takes your file and compresses it with HSF+ compression. Apple introduced HFS+ compression with OS X Snow Leopard. They developed HFS+ compression to be a super convenient way to compress files while still allowing them to be accessed via the same directory where they were originally saved. HFS+ compressed files also don’t need to be manually decompressed when used as OS X will do that for you in the background. HFS+ compression works with much any file type, though it works best with uncompressed text documents and databases.

Compressing Files With MoreSpace

When you first install MoreSpace, you may be a bit intimidated by the lack instructional mode. But fear not, once you get the hang of using MoreSpace, it’s a really easy application to use. When you’re ready to compress a folder, just hit the “Add Folder…” button which is located on the bottom lefthand side of the app. When you click on this, a Finder window will pop up, from here you can choose the folder which you’d like to compress. When you add a folder, it will automatically be compressed using HFS+ compression. Depending on the size of your folder, applying HFS+ compression may take a bit.

If for some reason you would like to manually decompress your files, you can do so by pressing the “decompress” button located next to your folder’s name in MoreSpace. This will remove HSF+ compression from your folder, reverting it back to its original size. On the other hand, if you add more files to a compressed folder and wish to compress the new files, you can press the “refresh” button located next to the file name. This will compress all new and uncompressed files within your compressed folder.

How Much Space Does MoreSpace Save?

I want to start off by saying that MoreSpace does work as expected. However, some users may be disappointed with how much space the application will actually save them. Why? Because, like I said before, HFS+ compression works best with text files. This is why when I made a folder filled with 6.2GB of random files (images, videos, etc), I only saved a mere 17mb. However, when I compressed my email inbox using the “Compress Mail…” button, I saved over 900mbs of space on a 1.9GB folder.

The User Interface

Once you understand what MoreSpace does, the application is really easy to use.

Since MoreSpace is a simple application, the application’s UI is simple as well. MoreSpace features a minimal interface which doesn’t hide any of the app’s features or controls. Because of this the app is easy to use once you understand its concept. And if you ever need any help with anything, you can press the help button located in the upper righthand corner of the application.

Should I Purchase MoreSpace?

Your mileage will vary with MoreSpace. If you have a ton of text documents, emails and other text-heavy files, you’ll save a ton of space with MoreSpace. On the other hand, if your drive is mainly composed of videos, photos and other media, you’re probably not going to find that MoreSpace is sufficient for your needs. However, I’d recommend that everyone who uses a desktop mail client purchase MoreSpace as it will save you a decent amount of drive space depending on the size of your inbox.

All in all, I can recommend MoreSpace at its $1.99 price tag. The app will save you money over purchasing a whole new drive for your Mac and is always there for instances when you need to free up a bit of space.

That just about concludes my review of MoreSpace. If you have experience with MoreSpace or any other HFS+ file compression application, be sure to drop a comment below telling us about your experience. If you prefer another file compression app to MoreSpace, let us know!

MoreSpace Folder Compression
Reviewed by Andrew Kunesh on
Nov 7.
MoreSpace is a low priced file compression application for OS X. It uses HFS+ compression to compress documents, however, it works best with text-heavy documents.
Rating:
8 out of
10

I’ve been using Clusters for a loooong time, and it does the same thing in a simpler way, and by default it ignores files types that won’t compress well and system folders that should be avoided. I feel much safer with Clusters.

…but also, this sort of compression doesn’t actually give you more space, it just compresses files so they can be loaded faster. The file, although smaller on the drive, occupies the same, uncompressed space in the file system so that you never run into a problem with needing to decompress the file and not having enough space on the drive to decompress into.

In other words, if a 4 MB file was compressed to 3.5 MB, you just have to load those 3.5 MB instead of all 4 MB when you use it, but those 3.5 MB are sitting in a reserved 4 MB space on the drive.